Elizabeth Warren’s family has mixed memories about heritage
As a child growing up in rural Arizona, Ina Mapes remembers her mother as a highly discreet woman who rarely expressed her personal feelings except when it came to one particularly incendiary topic: Did Mapes’s father, a raven-haired lawyer, have Native American roots, or did he not? Mapes’s grandmother maintained that he had one-quarter tribal blood. But her mother wanted to hear nothing of it.
“My mother did not approve of Indians, and she insisted that my father was not an Indian,” said Mapes, 77, of Catalina, Ariz. “In those days, it was not a plus to be an Indian, not at all. She said that Granny, my father’s mother, was just making it up and she did not believe it.”
Mapes, a mother of four who volunteers in a clothing bank, is a second cousin to US Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren. The two women, who have never met, share more DNA than most second cousins: Not only were their grandmothers sisters, their grandfathers were brothers. Those brothers — a team of carpenters named Harry and Everett Reed who plied their trade in the Indian Territory that would become the state of Oklahoma — are believed by some family members to have roots in the Delaware tribe. Mapes, who said she was unaware of her cousin’s candidacy until contacted by a reporter, said she does not doubt her heritage.
“I think you are what you are,” said Mapes. “And part of us is Indian.”
Questions about Warren’s roots have continued to shadow her candidacy since the matter erupted in a political firestorm in April. Warren acknowledged that she had identified herself as a minority in a legal directory for nearly a decade, and she was listed as a Native American in federal forms filed by the law schools at Harvard University and University of Pennsylvania where she worked. Warren has never fully explained her assertion of Native American ancestry, and her Republican opponents continue to brand her a liar. Officials from both schools have said that her assertion of ancestry was not a factor in her hiring.
full: http://www.boston.com/news/politics/2012/senate/2012/09/15/elizabeth-warren-family-has-mixed-memories-about-heritage/cPMflfaOlndM1jFbimJ4tM/singlepage.html
found this article via the Political Animal blog, which characterizes the article as confirming Warren really has Native American roots.
= new reply since forum marked as read
I don't care what her background is, or isn't.
I do care about what she'll do for working-class citizens after she's elected.
Can we move on now.................
Fair is fair.
